Not a Fluke

Here's an example of the roller-coaster ride that a Church's finances may be. But it is, so to speak, normal. At the turn of 2009/2010, our Church experienced a major drop in giving. I thought that the most likely explanation was my wife's cancer diagnosis, which meant in turn that I stepped back from our annual financial campaign. Usually I was at the forefront of that. For the first two-thirds of the financial year, members' giving was more than R50,000 below budget. That means, bleak. However, over the same period, our bank balance rose nearly R60,000 -- then our income entered its strongest stretch in living memory, with one month yielding nearly R95,000. OBSERVATION: Nothing went to plan -- yet we had to attribute it (again) to a miracle of God. There were those who said, "Fluke!" Yet every year is a fluke, in the Church.